It is amazing how ways you can use building blocks. My son and have created water parks and tall buildings with them. Recently I challenged him to help me create shamrock silhouettes and then select matching building blocks to place on them. We found that the blocks needed to be rotated to get silhouettes that looked close to shamrocks.
Creating Building Blocks Shamrocks
Exploring Ways to Make Shamrocks
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We started by taking out a bag of small Melissa & Doug 100-Piece Wood Blocks Set.(The blocks found on this link are not the same as ours, but would be great for this activity.) Then I issued the following challenge to both of us (Yes, I issued the directions to myself.):
- Find as many ways as you can to make shamrocks using the blocks.
- Each shamrock does not need to be made up of blocks of the same shape or color.
- The shapes can’t overlap.
Creating the Shamrocks on Construction Paper
After creating four different shamrocks, I traced the building blocks silhouettes on to green paper to be cut out. Several layers of green paper were placed under the outlines so that more than one shape could be built at a time. When the shapes had been cut out they were glued onto a piece of orange paper. ( The Irish flag is green, white and orange.)I thought it would have this part of the activity display two of the flag’s colors.
Duplicating the Silhouettes with Blocks
For young children just placing the blocks in the correct position would be a challenge. My son is in first grade so I asked him to find the right shapes and then really think about how to display them. He needed to make sure that he selected a chose a different design to display for each block. ( His blocks have unique designs on each side.) This wasn’t possible to do with the red cylinder blocks.
Hint: If your blocks don’t have different designs on each side, you could place different stickers on each of the side. The stickers could have a St. Patrick’s Day theme.
Discussing the Blocks Shape
My son has just finished a unit on 3-D shapes at school. We took a few moments to talk about what 3-D each block was. We also talked about what flat shapes that each shape was made up of.
Many Layers of Learning While Block Building:
- As we completed all the steps in this block building activity we worked on the following skills:
- Visual discrimination (Placing the blocks in to shamrock shapes.)
- Fine Motor Skills (Moving , Tracing, Cutting, and Gluing Shapes)
- Analyzing what side of a block to use.
Here are some more shape activities:
Dr. Seuss Thing One and Thing Two Shape Activity
LEGO Shapes- Open and Closed Polygons
If you do try any of the above geometry practice activities, please leave me a comment below telling me about it or share a picture of it on my Facebook page.
